• kdcd@sh.itjust.works
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    3 days ago

    My father recommended The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson and I fucking hated it. The main character is an awful person. I was waiting for someone to kill him the whole book

    • The_v@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      He was truly a terrible character. I got fed up with the asshat and never finished it.

    • gramie@lemmy.ca
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      3 days ago

      That is actually one of my favorite books of all time. Well, at least the first two trilogies. After that, I don’t think he really had much to say.

      What worked for me was a protagonist who was in many ways a terrible human being, but actually thought about the morality of his actions, and respected the values of the secondary characters.

      It was also the first book I ever read that required me to keep a dictionary nearby. I was only about 16 when I read the first book, but I enjoyed having my vocabulary expanded.

      Some people probably dislike the overwhelming amount of similes and heavy use of metaphor, but it made me sit back and think about what I was reading, rather than just burning through it.

    • 2deck@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      I can sympathise, but it’s interesting as one of the only books to depict a truly terrible person being summoned to a fantasy world. IMO it has quite the slow burn character arc over the series.

    • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      That was a TOUGH read. It came up in my fantasy kick back in the 80s, so many other better books to read!